Description

Using the Canadian Census and provincial election results from 1970 to 2010, I examine the shifts in the level of female political representation and its effects on the gender wage gap in Canada. Increases in female representation by 1 percent, decrease male wages by 0.6 percent and increase female wages by 0.1 to zero percent. The political ideology of the party in power are shown to have effects on the wage differential. Provinces with left-leaning parties in power increase female wages by 1.3 percent higher than centre-leaning parties. I also find that wage differences between males and females are smaller in the later censuses than in the earlier ones, but the effect of increasing female political representation is much bigger in the earlier years, 1.3 percent and 0.1 percent respectively. This paper also makes a secondary contribution; in order to identify the link between female political representation and the gender wage gap, I created a detailed provincial political representation dataset, that focuses on gender specific results dating back to 1970.